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Published: April 10th 2010
I've been to the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC - oh so powerful. And to Dachau Prison where I've seen the gas chambers and the crematorium where hundreds of thousands died. To the powerful Jewish Cemetery in Warsaw, where the entire history of the vibrant Jewish community there just stopped, without anyone left to even take care of the graves. But I think that the most moving experience yet, as my mind and spirit tries to somehow make sense of the senseless cruelty and pain of that period of history, is perhaps in Moscow.
On the western fringes of the city, in a park celebrating the Great Patriotic War, near the Arch that celebrates the battle that turned Napoleon around with his first defeat in his march across Europe, there is a mind numbing sculpture.
It was a brisk June day as I approached that sculpture, a leaden sky reached down toward the earth.
I stood in front of the sculpture.
On your left begins a curving line of stark and gaunt people, stripped of their clothing, their dignity, trying to shield the eyes of the young from the horror. Their shoes, glasses, books lie on the
ground behind them.
As that line stretches into the distance and curves around to the right, the figures become less and less distinct. They begin leaning back more and more precariously. The etched lines of their bodies fade as those bodies become more and more rectangular. The forms break through a high wall. And as you follow the line of shapes you slowly realize that you are no longer looking at human bodies, but at gravestones.
It was shocking.
The emotions welled up, beyond any hope of control.
And the low hanging gray sky that watched as I cried began to cry too.
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Cheri Thurston
non-member comment
Unbelievable
I have never seen pictures of this or heard of it. Even the pictures are unbelievably powerful. I can't imagine seeing it in person. Thank you for sharing.